Sunday, August 12, 2007

Good thoughts from Atrios

If you get a chance to bop on over to Eschaton today, please do so...although I can't resist quoting him for your enjoyment.

As has been the case for some many things thesepast years the choices were never "nothing" or "Pony plan." The choices werealways "nothing" or "George Bush's plan." The failure to comprehend that simplefact has prevented members of our very serious crowd of pundits from listeningto or admitting to the validity of criticism of so many things. Years later,opponents of the Iraq invasion are almost entirely absent from our mainstreamour discourse even though they were the ones who were pointing out what wasgoing wrong in real time even as the Weekly Standard cheerleaders were simplytelling us that hope was a plan and that clapping louder was the best thing wecould do.

For years it's been a verbal tic of many Iraqwar opponents to assert "I supported the war in Afghanistan..." as a necessaryprophylactic to charges of "unserious peacenik dirty fucking hippie!" Thequestion is dangling, however... "should you have?" At the very least, shouldn'tyou have tried to open the door to critics who were less than supportive, notbecause they hate America, but because they were concerned that George Bushwould fuck the whole thing up? Because it was hard to imagine that they'dactually go in and rebuild the place?

A lot of the denizens of Left Blogsylvania are speaking the (openly) the truths that most of us have felt since 2002, 2003 and maybe even earlier....It's good to hear these things and maybe if enough people hear them we will reach some kind of public "critical mass" and make REAL CHANGE happen..